This invention relates to a shopping organizer, and, more particularly, to a one-piece, foldable organizer for storing coupons, shopping lists and the like.
It is common practice in retail sales establishments, particularly supermarkets and drug stores, to promote various items by the issuance of premiums or coupons which are redeemable by the customer at the store. Coupons reach the customers from a variety of sources including newspapers, magazines and direct mail advertisements from which they are clipped as the customer compiles a shopping list. In most cases, the coupons are redeemable only at the point of purchase for a specific item, and must be presented to the cashier at the time of purchase. Due to the variety and sheer number of coupons that many shoppers customarily handle in even a single shopping trip, proper organization of coupons is important. A need exists for an organizer having a pocket or other storage compartment in which coupons can be orderly arranged while making up one's shopping list so that the appropriate coupons are readily available at the checkout line. It is also advantageous for the coupon organizer to be conveniently mounted to the shopping cart, and include a hard writing surface preferably having some means to clip a shopping list thereto, so that as items are placed in the cart they can be marked off the list.
A variety of shopping organizers have been proposed in the prior art including those having a clipboard mounted to the shopping cart for retaining a shopping list. See for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,881,267; 2,888,761; and 3,539,204. These patents disclose an assortment of clamps, clips and other means for mounting the clipboard in a generally horizontal position to the shopping cart adding to the cost of such organizers. Moreover, such clamp and clip designs may not be adapted to mount to shopping carts having different spacings between the handles and baskets and/or different diameter handles and wires forming the baskets. In addition, none of the shopping organizers disclosed in the above-listed patents include a pocket or other means for carrying and organizing coupons.
Other known shopping organizers provide both a pocket for organizing coupons and a clipboard for securing a shopping list. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,274,567 to Sawyer describes an organizer comprising a rigid plate or board including a spring clip, which is hinged to an accordion-shaped receptacle having compartments for coupons and other materials. The rigid plate is formed with a mounting clip or strap for mounting the plate to the handle of a shopping cart, and the accordion-shaped receptacle is formed with hooks to mount it to a wire cross piece of the cart. While this organizer provides an improvement over those having only a clipboard, it too is relatively expensive to manufacture and may not be universally mounted to all types of shopping carts.
The Sawyer organizer and those described hereinabove each include a large rigid clipboard which is bulky and cannot be folded into a compact size. As is well known, many shopping carts include a child's seat at the rearward end of the basket part of the cart near the handle. If not used to seat a child, these seats are often used to carry easily crushed items such as bread and the like. Each of the patents cited above provide organizers which project over the handle and into the basket portion of the shopping cart, obstructing the child's seat and limiting its storage capability or placing it within easy reach of the child placed in the seat.